


I Want To Gather Your Darkness

by FelicityGS



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Child Abuse, Crime AU, Gore, HEY HAPPY HOLS, I think that's all the tags, Implied Cannibalism, M/M, Manipulation, Patricide, Training, Violence, berserk loki, considering yeah no let's tag it that, dark fic for darkest night, he cares in really horrible ways, kind of, manipulative thor, not touching what else is implied, obedience training, thor will actually tear apart anyone who tries to hurt loki, yeah there's def abuse here if you consider just thor's treatment of loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:11:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor finds him in the rain. He's scrawny, shivering (cold and drugs both), wet to the bone and clothes tattered. He's pretty, beneath the sharp edges and bloody broken nose (will grow prettier), and he watches Thor like most people watch approaching hail storms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want To Gather Your Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Like a perfect storm of horrible, this picture of [Chris Hemsworth](http://fel-as-in-tumbld.tumblr.com/post/70489504606/chris-hemsworth-for-prestige-2012) showed up on my dash, [Verbyna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna) started talking about their own wonderful crime AU, and Tom's [pics showing up from Coriolanus](http://25.media.tumblr.com/eb90f112664d7c64829ef6140923fcb4/tumblr_mxyl62IPL11sgz2h2o1_1280.jpg) (warning gore).
> 
> Do read the tags. This one is mighty dark, particularly compared to what I'm usually churning out. 
> 
> (Thor's bits are past, while Loki's are present. I wavered on how to portray that forever and I'm not happy with the solution of italicizing Thor's parts but it'll do and lessons for the future)
> 
> Update: The _amazing_ wonderful Rubberbandgirlme made a [_beautiful_ graphic](http://rubberbandgirlme.tumblr.com/post/71047461514/inspired-by-a-gorgeous-felicitygs-story-i-want) inspired by the fic and just I want to cry it's perfect

 

I want to gather your darkness  
in my hands, to cup it like water  
and drink.

—jane hirshfield, “to drink”

**i.**

_Thor finds him in the rain. He's scrawny, shivering (cold and drugs both), wet to the bone and clothes tattered. He's pretty, beneath the sharp edges and bloody broken nose (will grow prettier), and he watches Thor like most people watch approaching hail storms._

_Thor smiles at him, broad and golden, and pulls a handkerchief out to wipe the blood off his face._

_"What do you want us to do with him?" Sif asks. She's furious that no one found the kid before this all went south (furious this went south). Thor wants to tell her not to worry--he can't remember the last he had a fight this good. Being the son of Odin means not getting his hands as viscerally dirty as he likes (there will never be a substitute for the crunch of bone beneath his fist)._

_"What's your name?" Thor asks. He keeps smiling; the kid can't be more than thirteen, maybe fourteen._

_Sif shakes him when he doesn't answer; the look he shoots her would curdle the blood of weaker people, venomous as a viper._

_It gives Thor ideas._

_"Loki," the teenager says, tilting his chin up like he doesn't buy Thor's genial smile for a moment and he's not frightened despite it._

_"Loki," Thor hums._

_(Thor was named for storms; Loki, he thinks, was named for fire._

_Thor has always admired the purity of a good blaze.)_

_Loki is still watching him._

_"Bring him along," Thor tells Sif. "Tell Fandral to find him clothes."_

_Sif scowls, unhappy, but Thor's made her unhappier with his decisions before and this will be little more than water under the bridge._

_(And if it doesn't work, Thor's hand will fit well enough around Loki's throat.)_

**ii.**

Loki listens, nods, then pulls out his gun and fires six shots--empties the clip smoothly, precisely. He sets it down on the desk, frowns at the ruined lining of his coat; he _knew_ he should have taken it to get that stray thread mended. Pity, he's rather fond of this one.

He looks up, notes the ghastly way most of those left in the room are staring at him. That was, he supposes, the point.

"Well?" he asks, impatient. "Clean up." He takes the coat off, drops it on top of the body, and walks out.

***

Loki likes fine coats, finer chocolate, and the particular feel of air on his neck after a kill.

"Darling," Amora croons as he steps out, trying to peer behind him to see if any of the new recruits have followed yet and instead getting Skurge carefully setting her back as he follows Loki outside.

"What's next?" Loki asks, as if he doesn't know.

Amora indulges, pulling out her planner.

"Dinner with Stark at Per Se. Just enough time to get the blood off your shoes. Darling, whatever happened to your coat?"

"Lining tore. Tell Fandral, he'll take care of it."

"He'll rip his hair out in despair. That's the fourth coat this month."

"Mm."

Loki stops listening as she talks to him, to Skurge, mind turning to what was said. Turning it over, remembering. It is important, in his line of work, to not let the past offer a weakness to exploit.

Loki loathes--blindingly, burningly _loathes_ \--being reminded of the gutter he crawled out of.

(Exactly why he manufactures these moments. He'll devour the world before he runs from his own weaknesses.)

 

**iii.**

_"You don't break a horse in by being gentle," Hogun says._

_"Then beat him up more in the ring," Thor replies, smiling, then pauses. "Don't beat it out of him."_

_Hogun snorts, but nods._

_***_

_"Sixteen, or so he keeps saying," Fandral tells him._

_"He's too pretty for sixteen."_

_Fandral shrugs._

_"He's eager enough."_

_"What else?" Thor says, ignoring the obvious tease; the other man is smart enough to keep his hands to himself, when it counts. He's missing the top joint of a pinky from when he learned the lesson--he's lucky that's all Freya took._

_"Addict, when he can get his hands on it, wants to cut Sif's throat in her sleep, paranoid." Fandral pauses. "He's going to take every kindness you give him, stab you in the back, and run as soon as he sees an opening."_

_"Where's he from?"_

_Fandral grimaces. Apparently Loki doesn't trust him that much--or want to remember._

_"Find out."_

_***_

_Thor stops Sif from murdering Loki when she wakes up bald and he's the one with her hair._

_Actually murdering--he's half bled out by the time Thor pulls Sif off, looks up at Thor dazed and giggling despite the knife in his side._

_"Why'd you stop her?" Loki slurs, trying to twist out of Thor's arms, hissing as Thor presses his vest to the worst stab wound the knife isn’t shoved in._

_"Get Volstagg," Thor says to Sif._

_"He's a fucking snake that wouldn't know loyalty if it bit him," Sif snarls. "Let him die."_

_"Get. Volstagg," Thor repeats, voice flat, fury barely restrained. Sif stares at him, pulls out her phone, and leaves._

_Thor glances down at Loki. Loki's staring at him, looking suddenly small and vulnerable--like he has no idea what to do with the weight of Thor's concern._

_"First rule," Thor says. "No one kills you but me."_

_Loki is trembling in his arms--cold, blood loss. Fear (behind that, want; Loki would do near anything for kindness he could trust)._

_Loki nods._

_Thor rewards him with a thin smile before carrying him out._

**iv.**

Loki knows people prefer to try to approach Thor instead of him. He doesn’t even mind; if anything, it makes him smile. Thor sends them to him anyway, and it’s very like a _present_ every time.

It’s because Thor is kind. People think Thor’s smiles mean Thor won’t tear them apart with that same kindness, use the wreckage to shape the world more to his liking.

Loki thinks they’re idiots who’ve never endured a storm in their life.

 

**v.**

Laufey’s son.

_That’s what Heimdall said. Heimdall doesn’t lay loyalty to Thor--he gives it to the family first, his sister second, Odin third. He thinks Thor is the best chance for the family right now, which is why Heimdall tells Thor and not Odin._

_Good--Odin would tear Loki apart._

_He also sees what it is Thor is trying to mold out of the remains of Loki's personality._

_“Be careful,” Heimdall says._

_Thor snorts. Storms rarely take care at all._

**vi**.

The next kill is almost twenty-four hours later and decidedly less precise.

(This isn’t a lesson, a mercy killing--this is business, pure and simple.)

***

He snaps awake, tries to throw a punch only to find his hands bound behind his back. Thor is crouched in front of him, one hand holding his jaw, other dabbing at a split lip.

“Hold still,” Thor says.

Loki snarls, tries to kick, tries to get his hands free of the leather cuffs attached to each other. He wants to tear Thor’s throat out with his teeth, feels half on fire and starved for the violence. Thor lets his face go and he lunges—

Thor backhands him, catches him by the hair before he can fall over, and rights him again. Forces his chin up and neck exposed, grip still tight and near painful in Loki’s hair. Loki grits his teeth, trying to blink the stars out of his eyes.

“Hold still,” Thor says again, voice warm, amused; it coils along Loki’s spine and he _loathes it_ , he’s going to rip Thor apart, he wants to tear and break, starved and starving, how _dare_ he talk that way, with so much _affection_.

“Shh,” Thor hushes, near tender, smart enough to move away from Loki’s mouth to the cut on his brow bone. Loki spits at him, laughing as Thor hits him again and blinking spots from his vision. Thor is scowling, now; Loki grins like a threat, tugging his wrists again.

“You’re being difficult,” Thor says, voice calm despite his scowl.

“And _you’re_ being a brute,” Loki sneers. “Just like always. What are you going to do, hmm?” He snorts, trying to toss his head though it only yanks against Thor’s hold and makes his eyes water. “I’m going to destroy you,” Loki promises silkily, lowering his lashes.

“Aren’t you always,” Thor says. “You aren’t the only one who suffers when you wait this long.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Loki snarls, livid, straining again, pain dull behind _fury_ , as if _Thor_ understands him, as if Loki can’t kill for business without ending up half-mad and mind a blank black canvas smeared in red when he wakes. Like _Loki_ is the emotional one when _Thor_ took him in on a whim.

“You hurt one of ours this time.” Thor pauses; Loki doesn’t remember anything. Warmth of blood, hum in his throat.

“So what?” Loki snaps. “I’ve never hurt any who weren’t about to stab you in the back.”

Thor is quiet; Loki refuses to look away. This, this he knows. He’s shaking, though, because _what if_ —

“What had they done?” Loki demands first.

Thor smiles, dark ( _proud_ ), hand loosening in Loki’s hair to cup the back of his head.

“I’ll tell you after.”

 

 **vii**.

_Loki’s lean, quick, and he fights dirty._

_Thor has Hogun set him up with work. Hogun says Loki’s a fast learner, and (provided the trust issue is worked out in the meantime) could do well. He’s not happy when Thor wants Loki to kill someone—”he’s half-shark”--but Thor has plans for Loki, all of which center on Loki's spite._

_***_

_Hogun just_ looks _at Thor when he gets back._

_“Find him,” Thor says lightly._

_“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen what he did,” Hogun says, flat._

_Thor only grins._

_***_

_They don’t have to find Loki--he comes back that night._

_Thor walks in his bedroom, catches glint out of the corner of his eye as the hall light catches on silver, and grunts as the knife glances off his ribs as he turns._

_Loki is lean, quick, and he fights dirty. He snarls, grabs Thor’s ponytail and yanks; Thor grabs the hand with the knife and slams it against the wall once, twice, and Loki drops it with a hiss. He’s already trying to claw for Thor’s eyes, heel coming down near Thor’s instep. Thor lets go what little hold he has, sidesteps, and slams Loki head first into the door frame._

_Loki goes limp._

_Thor lets him slump to the floor and breathes for a few moments. His side burns, but he’s had worse. Flicking the lights on, he gets a better look at Loki--same black clothes he went out in, but even still he’s coated in blood. His shoes and socks are lost somewhere, bare feet just as coated as the rest; it puts Thor in mind of coyotes rolling in their kill to hide their scent._

_A little sorting later, and he’s got Loki laid in the bed, hands cuffed above his head to the bedframe. Thor bandages up the cut on his side, changes into a shirt that hasn’t been ruined, and waits._

_***_

_“Where should I start, your mother? I bet she’d scream pretty enough—”_

_“Animal,” Thor says before his temper gets the best of him; Loki goes pale beneath the blood, then snarls, jerking hard enough that the bedframe creaks and Thor thinks for a moment Loki might manage to dislocate his own shoulders. Thor grins. “Don’t like being called that, do you?”_

_Loki goes still, narrow chest heaving, eyes fae as swamp fire._

_Thor leans down, resting a hand on Loki’s neck to keep him from head-butting him._

_“I’m not,” Loki says, certain and vulnerable. Thor wonders how many times he’s been called animal, how much of it was beat into him and how much inborn. He can’t imagine Loki as anything but what he is, now, and what he would make of him._

_“But you are,” Thor says, rubbing his thumb along Loki’s jumping pulse. “Look at you.”_

_“_ I’m not _!”_

_Thor keeps his hand pressed to Loki’s throat, feeling the tendons tensing under his palm._

_“It’s okay, Loki,” Thor says kindly, giving a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with being feral.”_

_“I’m not,” Loki repeats, trembling._

_“You are,” Thor says, “but I’ll teach you to hide it.” He grins again, broad and predatory. “You’re beautiful like this--it’s a shame no one’s taught you to see it.”_

_“I’m going to destroy you.”_

_“Yes,” Thor says, “you’ll try,” and leans down to kiss Loki’s brow._

_***_

_Thor sends Loki out again, keeps sending him out. Hogun’s not happy, but Thor knows what he’s doing. Loki slips away after each kill, circles back like a hunting falcon. Most times, he waits for Thor to sleep before he tries to kill him (provoke him; Thor doesn’t miss how soft Loki’s eyes go when Thor has a hand around his throat, cutting off his air)._

_Thor doesn’t mention Loki trying to kill him to anyone else. They wouldn’t understand what it is Loki gets from the violence, wouldn’t understand what Thor gets by refusing to curb the tendency._

_(Thor has grown up listening to Odin tell him how he needs to do things. Thor will do things differently; he wants people’s trust, he gets more done with them liking him, thinking he’s kind, but there are limits to honesty and loyalty and trust in his world._

_Sometimes, people just need to fear. Thor is simply making sure they don't fear him._

_He’s been gathering people his whole life to fill out his weaknesses; this is no different. Loki will be beautiful at Thor’s side, if the teen can survive the process.)_

_***_

_Slowly, Loki stops acting half animal in front of the others, more human. Haughty and cold and slick smiles. Learns to hide, learns how to find his own people._

_Thor asks, “Easier, isn’t it?” and laughs when Loki punches him in the arm._

_***_

_Thor wakes one night to a hot weight curled against his side; his hand curls around the gun under his pillow, but there’s no movement. Just wet and ragged breath._

_(Hogun came back alone, grim faced--said there was a gunshot from one of the rooms followed by Loki’s howl, but other than a trail of blood and less mangled than normal body, they couldn’t find Loki.)_

_Flicking the light on, Thor sits up carefully. Loki hisses, eyes squeezed tight; his entire right side is coated in blood. For once it’s his own._

_“Stay,” Thor tells him calmly before getting out of the bed. Loki is watching him when Thor comes back. Thor pries Loki’s hand away from the bullet wound; as soon as he does, Loki snarls, trying to get his hand back, trying to twist away. Thor cuffs his wrist to the bed, presses a knuckle against the wound, and Loki goes still with a whine, tilting his head._

_Baring his throat._

_“Good,” Thor tells him; Loki shudders._

_Loki’s skin is burning, the edges of the wound a colour Thor doesn’t much care for--it’s likely infected, or fast on its way. He’s surprised Loki was able to get back at all; he’s being quiet now, eyes glazed and breath shallow, clearly exhausted. Thor calls Volstagg, then sets to work cleaning up around the wound. Glances up and meets Loki’s eyes._

_“First rule,” Thor says._

_Loki blinks slowly, then says, syllables halting and badly inflected, like he can barely remember them at all, “Came back.”_

_Thor smiles._

**viii.**

They go out.

Loki tolerates Thor dressing him, tolerates Thor buttoning and smoothing his vest, tolerates the scarf tied around his neck to hide a promise. He still _itches_ , essence of blood still in his mouth, but he holds his arms out and lets Thor fasten cuff links and drape him in a coat. Thor kisses the cut on his brow like a benediction (it helps, but not nearly enough).

(He’s _starving_ , hasn’t been this hungry since Laufey--like a fire burning through his chest. There’s a reason he avoids getting his hands dirty these days.)

They go to one of Thor’s places, an underground fighting ring where people are like as not to turn up dead. Loki hates these places (brutish, animalistic), but Thor loves them for how honest they are (thinks Loki should love them because he can be what he was ( _is_ )).

People here recognize Thor. Thor smiles, laughs, claps people on shoulders; people return all three. No one is stupid enough to do the same to Loki.

Thor leaves Loki on a set of bleachers, toying with the end of his scarf; comes back five minutes later. Takes Loki’s coat, stores cufflinks in a pocket, rolls up Loki’s sleeves.

“Next round,” Thor says cheerfully.

“I’d rather not,” Loki says, distaste sour on his tongue. He leaves off the _it’s not you_.

Thor laughs, shoving Loki towards where he needs to go. Leans against the edge of the ring while Loki eyes who he’s meant to fight, broad chest pressed to Loki’s back as he grabs the scarf just before the bell rings.

Presses a kiss to the collar that’d been hidden, then rumbles so low Loki feels it to his toes, warmth and heat and _promise_ curling up his spine

“ _Attack_.”

***

Everything drops, still and blank and _perfect_ , warmth and a hum in his throat, easy as murder without the worship.

***

There’s a whistle, sharp (pierces through reverence like light)-- _hie away, Loki, to me_ —

He blinks.

He’s sitting on someone’s chest, blood covering his knuckles, face broken and purple beneath him.

(He feels… human. What he imagines human feels like. Not _hungry_.)

“Loki, hie away.”

He blinks. Thought still feels distant, slow.

(Do people live without feeling so sharp?)

He gets up, turns, looks--there. There’s Thor. Golden and smiling and _proud_.

“Come, boy.”

Loki goes. He always has.

***

He falls asleep in the car, curled half on Thor’s lap, Thor’s fingers heavy and warm on the skin beneath his collar.

 

**ix.**

_It’s four years later when Odin decides to make an alliance with Laufey._

_Thor is…_ furious _, to put it mildly. He gets drunk, wakes up a day later with three broken fingers, a broken rib, and no idea where he is._

_(He grew up on hating Laufey, grew up on hating his family--Laufey’s dirt, Laufey’s a traitor, Laufey deals in sex trade and drugs that Thor won’t touch because he’s got his own lines he’s made. He forgot they weren’t Odin’s.)_

_Loki finds him. He usually does, these days._

_There’s a sneer on his face, and Thor doubts its an accident when Loki prods Thor’s broken rib with his foot._

_***_

_“He’s old and a fool,” Thor grumbles._

_“He’s also in charge right now,” Sif reminds him. “Hold still.”_

_Thor grunts as she starts to clean up the cut on his back._

_***_

_Loki stays out of sight after that--apparently went missing when Thor did and once Sif has Thor, disappears again._

_(Odin has never liked Loki, has treated him like an indulgence for Thor; Loki’s smart enough to disappear when Thor is out of Odin’s good graces.)_

_Thor wakes to Loki straddling his waist, staring down at him._

_“I have a plan,” Loki says, eyes bright._

_***_

_“It’s a stupid plan,” Thor tells him in the morning with too much time to think on it._

_Loki looks at him in the mirror, raising an eyebrow._

_“I don’t like it. You’re painting a target on your back.”_

_“You need to stay beautiful,” Loki says, putting on his cufflinks. “You’re built on appearing the rational one, the kind one. Bloody takeovers and destroying families isn’t your style. Isn’t that why you kept me?”_

_(Loki has a point. Thor’s more worried Loki won’t come back--he needs him, now.)_

_“Fine,” Thor says, because it’s true. “We’ll do this your way.”_

_Loki smiles like a cat with a canary to eat._

_(It’s been a year since Loki last killed someone. Thor’s made a mistake pushing Loki away from the violence he used to shape Loki’s personhood, believed Loki’s disdain and words that he didn't need that any longer, and is only just now realizing it.)_

_***_

_The plan is simple enough--to all intents and purposes, Loki looks like he betrays Thor. Everyone’s expected it for so long, and the reveal he’s Laufey’s son is just icing._

_(The only one they tell prior is Heimdall, who looked at them for a few long minutes before nodding, once; Thor knew from the start that if Heimdall didn’t approve, they’d not have any chance of pulling this off.)_

_***_

_Thor hates lying this way, but he plays his role and ends up banished to Europe--alone._

_***_

_When he comes back--when Laufey’s empire is in ruins and Laufey missing, when everyone has realized that Loki’s betrayal was more his own particular brand of protection and Thor is much more clever an heir than anyone ever suspected--Loki isn’t around._

_Thor has always let Loki return in his own time._

_(He remembers a boy, pretty (who would grow prettier), feral and fury and venom, little more than animal.)_

_Thor’s put too much work into Loki’s shaping, into turning Loki into the viper Thor couldn’t and can’t be, to let it go to waste._

_Thor goes hunting._

_***_

_He finds Loki at the beginning. Thor should have known, should have started there, but he never knew the reason Loki was in that warehouse all those years ago and never cared to ask._

_(The why wasn’t important, then.)_

_Hogun’s told Thor, before, that Loki hums when he kills, some off-kilter dissonant sound that can hardly be called music. Thor’s heard snippets when Loki fights--thinks it sounds like star song, reflects a little madness the universe saw fit to put into Loki when he was born._

_Loki isn’t humming now. He’s snarls and sobs that rise to half-howl, and it echos off the metal of the walls, rings back, layers a ghostly soul shattering. It’s Laufey he’s crouched over, or was--his throat is torn out, chest torn open, insides out and strangled on his own entrails. His heart’s lying next to them both, half-eaten like a ritual. Loki hasn’t seemed to notice Laufey’s dead, a hand holding the remains of Laufey’s throat as he punches his face, over and over and over._

_He’s crying, tear tracks cutting through blood smeared over his face._

_Thor approaches; Loki doesn’t notice, focused entirely and wholly on destroying whatever demons he has left. Crouching just outside the blood spatter and viscera, Thor whistles like he would to call a dog._

_Loki jerks, focusing on Thor with wide eyes, fist drawn back._

_“Hie away, Loki,” Thor says._ Let it go _._

_Loki bares blood-stained teeth. Thor stays crouched, looking back at him evenly, and holds a hand out, palm up._

_“Come, boy,” Thor says._

_Loki glances back down at Laufey. His grip spasms; before he can punch the corpse again, Thor whistles, sharp. Loki flinches, looking up at him._

_“Hie. Away.” Thor says, firm. Sure. Gestures with his hand. “Come, boy. To me.”_

_Loki glances between the two of them again, then shakily crawls off of Laufey’s corpse, crawls over to Thor, reaching with blood coated hands for him. Thor pulls him into his arms, sitting down on the ground to hold him, rocking Loki in his arms as Loki grieves against his neck._

_“Good boy,” Thor murmurs, stroking his hair. “You’re safe now.”_

_***_

_Thor calls Hogun to come get them, to deal with the body. Loki’s quiet, follows Thor closely, hand gripping Thor’s shirt._

_Thor stares out the window in the car, doesn’t flinch when Loki crawls into his lap--only strokes his neck until he falls asleep._

_He’ll give Loki a kingdom to keep him safe from that kind of hurt again._

_(His only regret is he wasn’t there to see it.)_


End file.
